Please allow Guard buffs from multiple tanks in PvP.

2.0 has significantly raised the value of bringing support classes to the table, and I'd argue tanking trees (Immortal, Darkness, Shieldtech) received some great overhauls. In turn, I anticipate more players will bring tank specs into WZs, and therefore more Guards to spread around. This leads to a noticeable quality-of-life problem for PvP tanking:

Guard buffs are currently mutually exclusive. If someone is being Guarded by a tank who's nowhere near (ie >15m away), they're not really being guarded at all. Yet that Guard buff prevents any other nearby, conscientious tank from applying theirs. You need the Guardee to manually click off the Guard buff before a nearby tank can apply theirs. Quality-of-life wise, this is pretty bad: it means a bad tank on your team can actively hinder the guard-swapping of a good tank on your team. The parallel for healers would be if healer A putting a weak heal on someone in need locked out healer B from burst-healing them: it's kinda silly.

A simple solution would be to allow multiple Guard buffs to apply, and only the nearest tank absorbs the damage transfer. If I recall, this is the system used in Warhammer Online, where the Guard system was coined (and incidentally whose PvP team got absorbed into Bioware when it acquired Mythic?). This change would allow tanks to better control their protection of teammates, and never find themselves penalised by the actions of a wayward tank. Insofar as quality-of-life is a major concern for improving gameplay - a stated aim of the devs going forward - I can't think of a good reason to not implement this. Please give it due consideration.

Edit1: Adding in the 3 suggestions we've had in the thread so far.

1. Tanks can apply Guard to anyone, even someone already Guarded. Only the nearest tank absorbs the damage transfer. The 5% bonus to mitigation from Guard should -not- stack from multiple Guards.
Pros: Clear and simple solution.
Cons: Gives tanks the highest flexibility out of any of the proposed solutions; arguably the 'strongest' change of the three.

2. Guardees whose tank has been out of range (>15m) for more than a set duration (say, 10 seconds) automatically lose that Guard buff, enabling a fresh tank to take over.
Pros: It'll pretty much take care of most situations where a wayward (read: newb) tank slaps a Guard on someone and then runs to a different node. It also still allows for set plays to shine, like pulling the Guard out of range to blow up the guardee healer (something you can counter in 1. by applying two Guards on the healer if needed).
Cons: Might have to reapply Guard more frequently in some situations.

3. Blue "out of range" Guard icon instantly makes Guard on that person overwritable by any tank. So, you can't take over Guard or double-stack Guards on anyone already being protected, but you can take over the moment they're not.
Pros: Would allow for some clutchier play: if you spot a Guard being deliberately pulled/pushed to assist down a healer, you can take over that Guard at once. No 10s window of waiting, but also no easy pre-placing of multiple Guards on sensitive targets.
Cons: Might find yourself occasionally losing Guard on someone due to the briefest periods away from them, in the presence of overzealous tanks.

Edit2: Also adding in the suggestion to take Guard off the gcd, allowing more clutchy responsiveness to damage (and mainly, to not have silly lag or ghost-gcd related delays).

Make it so another guard can guard a guarded guardee if the guardee's guard is out of range.

Certainly an option too, if it's difficult for them to code the proximity-based damage transfer. They can simply have it so a tank can overwrite an existing Guard buff IF it is currently out of range, as signalled by the "out of range" blue icon. That's a simpler binary check and may be easier to implement, while still broadly achieving the desired aim.

They should just make all players to immortal gods who shoot sparkly fairy dust at eachother while merrily bunny hopping around the nodes.

Cake is a lie, there is only pie. Through pie, I gain calories.
Through calories, I gain bodyfat. Through bodyfat, I gain weight.
Through weight, my social life is broken.
The Thighmaster shall free me.

as soon as the guard moves out of range of his guarded target the guard buff should drop off, personally I would like to see the dopey fecker teleported back to the healer he was guarding so he is forced to do the job rather than hunt medals but that's just me In much the same way i would like to see the 3 muppets who chase to cap a node all explode the moment they run away from it

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The statements and opinions expressed on these websites are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, nor are they endorsed by Bioware, LucasArts, and its licensors do not guarantee the accuracy of, and are in no way responsible for any content on these websites.